Ginny Golding celebrates 65th birthday with charity golfathon

Brad Ziemer, Vancouver Sun06.13.2014

Swinging in style-- Ginny Golding, the first CPGA female pro in B.C. about to celebrate her 65th birthday on June 23, Ginny is playing 65 holes of golf at University Golf Club and is raising over $65,000 for a charity that helps send young girls to school in Kenya and Tanzania here in Vancouver on June 10, 2014.Mark van Manen
/ Vancouver Sun

Swinging in style-- Ginny Golding, the first CPGA female pro in B.C. about to celebrate her 65th birthday on June 23, Ginny is playing 65 holes of golf at University Golf Club and is raising over $65,000 for a charity that helps send young girls to school in Kenya and Tanzania here in Vancouver on June 10, 2014.Mark van Manen
/ Vancouver Sun

Swinging in style-- Ginny Golding, the first CPGA female pro in B.C. about to celebrate her 65th birthday on June 23, Ginny is playing 65 holes of golf at University Golf Club and is raising over $65,000 for a charity that helps send young girls to school in Kenya and Tanzania here in Vancouver on June 10, 2014.Mark van Manen
/ PNG

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To celebrate her 65th birthday, Ginny Golding is doing what she has done for most of her life. She’s following her heart.

The rest of her body may take issue with Golding’s plan to play 65 holes on June 23 at University Golf Club in hopes of raising $65,000 for a charity that is dear to that big heart of hers.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” the longtime teaching pro says with a laugh. “I’ll maybe need to see a chiropractor the next week.”

Golding, who 30 years ago became the first female CPGA pro in British Columbia, felt like she needed to do something to mark a personal milestone of sorts.

“I come up with ideas off the top of my head and next thing I know it’s happening,” Golding says. “I wanted to celebrate 30 years in golf — actually 60 years in golf because I started when I was five. I was sitting at my desk one day and said I’m turning 65, what can I do to recognize that? What would make sense? I thought 65 holes, 65 years, raise $65,000 for the Canadian Harambee Education Society. And I said that would be fun, I could play 65 holes before really thinking about it, before checking in with my body.”

CHES is a charity that Golding has a real connection to. She and April Stubbs, a teaching pro at Musqueam Golf & Learning Centre, started a tournament to raise money for the charity, which helps fund education for girls in Kenya and Tanzania. Over the past five years, that tournament has raised $157,000.

CHES was started by Lorrie Williams, now a New Westminster city councillor, who went to Kenya to teach in the 1980s and was struck by the fact that very few girls got more than a primary education. Williams ended up sponsoring one of the young women in her high school class so she could stay in school. It was Williams’ story, chronicled by Erica Johnson in a CBC documentary a few years ago called Educating Margaret, that inspired Golding to get involved with CHES.

“The beautiful thing is when they did the documentary it was Lorrie going back to Kenya 25 years later and meeting Margaret again,” Golding says. “Margaret is doing a PhD in nursing, has two children and named her daughter Lorrie. Young Lorrie has just graduated from Sprott Shaw College here in Vancouver because Lorrie helped her get a scholarship and young Lorrie wants to go off and do her MBA at UBC and would like to take her skills back to Kenya and teach women. It’s just this neat story about how she educated one girl and then it just continued.”

CHES is now sponsoring more than 700 young women in Kenya and Tanzania.

Golding figures she has taught thousands of golf lessons over the years, most of them on the range at University Golf Club. Many of her current and former students are helping her meet her $65,000 goal. As of earlier this week, she had already collected pledges for $57,000.

“The word Harambee means ‘pulling together’ in Swahili,” Golding says. “So what I have experienced on a personal level is the pulling together of all of these people I have known in golf here in Vancouver. Students, friends of students, and it’s poignant for me to do the 65 holes at University Golf club because that is where I started in 1985.”

So at 5:30 a.m. on June 23 — a week from this Monday — Golding will set out on her 65-hole journey, not really thinking about making birdies but of raising as much money as she can for those young women in Africa.

Her daughter, Jessica, is returning home from Singapore, and her son, Jeremy, is making the trip from Calgary to support their mom. They’ll drive her power cart.

University Golf Club general manager Michael Mather has helped arrange a pit crew for Golding.

“I have these two gals in their 60s and 70s coming out at 5:30 to be my pit crew,” Golding says. “They are going to rake bunkers, tee up my ball, throw the sand and seed down, pull the flag, fix the pitch marks. It’s going to be fun. I just have to swing the club.”

Golding will start at the eighth hole, so her 65th hole will be No. 18 at University. Mather plans to greet her there with a bottle of champagne.

“What she is doing is a real testament to who she is as a person and who she is as a golf professional as well,” Mather says.

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Ginny Golding celebrates 65th birthday with charity golfathon

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